LARGO, Fla. – Students at Pinellas County Schools high schools will continue to see enhancements made to the Pinellas Education Foundation’s Future Plans® program thanks to the $19,220 donated from Amscot Financial’s ‘Just-a-Dollar’ Campaign.
Throughout the month of February, Amscot Financial asked customers to contribute $1 to their local education foundation to provide support for students and teachers in an effort to advance student success in school. With additional contributions from the company’s founder and Tampa-based corporate office, 2018 contributions totaled $185,805. Combined with ten years of previous one-month campaigns, the total raised reached nearly $1.3 million.
“This campaign clearly resonates with both our customers and our associates,” said Ian MacKechnie, founder and CEO of Amscot Financial. “The fact that the funds are used for unmet needs and to help individual students means a great deal to all of us.”
Future Plans® is a self-administered, career guidance program that has helped more than 30,000 Pinellas high school students in the past two years discover how their strengths, interests and values are aligned to in-demand careers. By providing students with a road map for successful education and career preparation, this program has become an essential planning tool for the county’s high school students. Independent research has confirmed that students with limited post-secondary navigational capital report high rates of satisfaction with Future Plans® because it provides insights into career options they might not otherwise have without their Future Plans® profile.
“We’re incredibly grateful for the support that Amscot Financial continues to provide our Foundation,” stated President Stacy Carlson. “Because of their generosity, our students will be prepared for life after high school, whether the choice is to attend college, enter the workforce or obtain technical training.”
Terry Boehm, president of Future Plans USA stated, “Our goal is to have students become better educational consumers. By giving them this user friendly tool, we help them plan their education based on their career choice rather than have their career determined by the education they receive.”
“Amscot’s Just-a-Dollar campaign is crowd-sourcing for a great cause: Helping meet the needs of vulnerable public school students in Florida,” said Mary Chance, president of the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations (CFEF). The CFEF works with Amscot Financial to coordinate campaign fund distributions among their 20 benefiting local education foundations in the company’s current service territory.
Founded in 1989, Amscot Financial employs more than 2,000 associates who work at 237 retail branches and at the company’s corporate headquarters in Tampa. The company currently operates retail locations in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando, Polk, Hardee, Highlands, Manatee, Sarasota, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake, Volusia, Brevard, Marion, Citrus, Flagler, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
# # #
About the Pinellas Education Foundation
The Pinellas Education Foundation is an independent, non-governmental not-for-profit established in 1986. The Foundation’s mission is to enhance and improve educational opportunities in Pinellas County Schools. Well known Pinellas Education Foundation programs include: Enterprise Village, Finance Park, Future Plans, Take Stock in Children Scholarships, Youth Connect and Fund A Classroom Grants. www.pinellaseducation.org